by Joshua Guess
My cell was underground and cool, leaving me no way to tell time aside from the meals they brought me. So I had no idea what the clock might have said when, two hours after my second meal of the day, a voice sounded through the door.
“Move forward, put your back to the slot, and slide your wrists through.”
I gave that order the consideration it deserved. “Eat a bag of dicks.”
A pause. “If you don’t comply, we’ll gas you and cuff you anyway.”
I smiled. “If you gas me and come through that door, I’ll bite your fucking throat out, asshole.”
What sounded like a muffled argument followed. The slot opened and something angular poked through. I could just make out a pair of eyes before a harsh snap echoed through the tiny room and my nervous system clocked out for a smoke break.
I was able to think as the Taser shocked me, if not at my usual cruising speed, so I knew what was going on as several people rushed in and cuffed my wrists together. They used a heavy shackle, the sort you might expect to find on huge men capable of snapping normal cuffs. I was a little flattered.
I was dragged through a bunch of hallways and eventually put in a steel chair bolted to the floor. A table sat in front of me, piled with half-familiar gear. Two guards took positions on either side of the door they’d brought me through, which I now faced.
John walked through it a few seconds later. He pulled the other chair out and sat down.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
I blinked at him in naked astonishment. “You sent a woman to her death and locked me in a cage for two days. How the fuck do you think I feel?”
He frowned, the expression making him look ten years older. “Janelle took her own life. Isolating you was for your safety and ours. We weren’t sure if you would have another uncontrolled bout of shivers. I don’t know if you’re aware, but you nearly killed me.”
I laughed, hard and bitter. “Sure, I’m aware. And if I hadn’t just taken out a bunch of zombies, I would have, you lucky son of a bitch.”
John froze. “So. You were acting under your own power, then?”
I shrugged. “You think many wildly uncontrollable people throw themselves into the shit to save another person’s life? Or try to, anyway. Yeah, it was all me. I couldn’t believe the first thing you’d go for was the data in her fucking backpack. You had me fooled, Doc. You’re a cold piece of work.”
Some fire lit behind his eyes, just a little. “Clearly you don’t understand if you can’t grasp why information like that would be valuable. I took samples from Janelle’s body as well, though I’m sure you’ll see it as desecrating her corpse. The initial results are already encouraging. We’re doing this to save lives, don’t you see that?”
“Yeah, I get the party line,” I said. “I even agree with it in theory. But explain to me how we needed to be put in real danger, with real zombies. Tell me what guiding scientific principle made you believe that life-threatening danger would produce a different physiological reaction than controlled combat against soldiers. Because I’ve been thinking about it for two days straight and I can’t think of one.”
The guards standing behind him both glanced at me, one of them giving me a small nod. I tried not to react. Instead of answering, John pushed a mound of the piled gear I now recognized as the collected backpacks we’d worn in the field aside and laced his fingers together in front of him.
The look on his face was placid, even satisfied. “The answer to your question can be found right here on this table. You nearly died by overdoing it one day, and on another you surpassed that level of exertion by a significant margin with no apparent ill effects. I would say the value of real-world testing is obvious.”
I ignored this completely, admittedly because I had no comeback for it. “How many times had those people been out on one of your little field trips that one of them would rather die than do it again? Valuable information aside, is it worth the hell you’re putting us through?”
“Yes,” John said simply. “It’s worth it if we can develop a cure. I’m sorry for every second of pain it causes, but it’s necessary.”
The damnable thing about it? I believed him. He seemed equally genuine about his regret as he did hard-nosed about its necessity.
God save us all from zealots with a clear mission.
When I got back to the patient dorm, someone was waiting for me. Samantha, the other Trigger, sat in the tiny common area just inside the entrance leading to the clinic. Upon seeing me, she stood and crooked a finger for me to follow.
I was curious enough to do it. She led me to the third—and top—floor, to one of the large corner rooms. Inside sat Davis, the other person who was supposed to have been forced to fight for his life the other day before Janelle’s suicide by zombie and my own reckless idiocy had ruined it.
She closed the door behind us and when I got a look at the entire room, I realized there were two other people in it. One was clearly another Trigger; he had the black lines fading from his skin. Guess he had a session in the clinic not long before. He was a serious-faced man with similar coloration to my own, so I guessed he had mixed ancestry as well.
The other was someone’s grandmother. The lady was old. Her pale skin was wrinkled all over, parchment thin, her deeply grooved face topped by white hair buzzed short. She raised a finger to her lips and nodded to Davis, who stepped over to the wall and made a show of carefully taping a folded up piece of fabric to it. Just before he did, I noticed a little imperfection in the center of the area he was covering up.
Ah. A microphone.
“There’s a piece of foam we taped up inside that shirt,” the old woman said. “The mic isn’t very good, so it can’t pick anything up when it’s covered. I’m Julia, by the way.”
“Anthony,” said the young black man.
Samantha plopped onto the bed next to them and gestured at Davis. “And you know our names”
“Ran,” I said. “So what changed that you’re all willing to talk to me all of a sudden?”
Julia smiled. “You tried to kill the doctor.”
“And save Janelle,” Anthony added.
Davis sat forward. “We were worried you’d drank the kool-aid they feed everyone who comes in here. You wouldn’t be the first.”
I looked at them, really looked at them, and what I saw stripped away any illusions I might have left. None of them was without visible scars on a spectrum of old and healed to fresh and angry. The haunted looks on their faces seemed etched deeply enough to become the baseline expression, all others mere window dressing on top of it. They were haggard and gaunt, eyes hollow, and each of them had a collection of tiny puncture wounds from blood draws dense enough to make them all look like heroin addicts.
“What have they been doing to you?” I said, not really expecting an answer.
Anthony, however, did. “Same thing they’ve been doing to you, just a lot longer. Might be getting real research out of it, but…” He trailed off, eyes darting back and forth, fingers opening and closing. I hadn’t often seen the first stirrings of an anxiety attack from the outside, but I knew what it was at once. Been there, done that.
Julia put her hand in his and squeezed. “It’s okay, sweetie. You don’t have to talk about it.”
Anthony nodded and squeezed her hand back.
“He’s had it worse than most of us,” Samantha said. “He’s in the best physical condition, so they push him twice as hard. We’re pretty sure the constant increase in testing is because ol’ Pickles and his people aren’t getting anywhere. It’s desperation.”
Yeah, that sounded about right. “Have any proof?”
“Of course not,” Davis said in a low, tight voice. “If we did, we’d take it to the Colonel. He’s the only one keeping this place going, and that’s only because he thinks the researchers are making progress.”
“How do you know he isn’t?” I asked.
Samantha grimaced. “You know how he gets excited abou
t little things? I mean, we all heard about your first big endurance test. He couldn’t shut up about it. He gets manic about shit like that all the time, and once in a while we catch him talking to himself when some new lead doesn’t work out. Muttering the way lots of people do when they think no one is paying attention.”
I leaned on the wall and let my head thud against it as I tilted it back. “That’s why he let me out.”
“Yeah,” said Anthony. “He can’t afford to keep you locked up. He has to test you to keep up appearances. Not that he sees it that way, I don’t think. He really believes his big breakthrough is just around the corner.”
I gestured around the room, trying to include it and all of us. “So what is this? Are we the council of Elrond, trying to decide which direction to go? Or do you guys have a plan of some kind?”
The four of them shared looks before Julia shrugged and spoke up. “We’ve been trying to make it clear to the soldiers how bad things are for us. It’s torture, you know. Waking up every day never being sure what awful thing you’ll have to do next. He hasn’t gotten to taking biopsies from you yet, but he will.”
I grimaced in revulsion. “Seriously?”
Julia nodded. “Take your pick. I’ve been forced to let him take skin, a liver sample, bone marrow, spinal fluid, muscle tissue.”
“They eye is the worst,” Anthony added.
“Jesus,” I breathed. “He fucking took vitreous fluid? Why?”
Anthony rolled a shoulder in a feeble shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine. And he doesn’t just do it once, either.”
I let my gaze sweet across them, trying to read something deeper than the tired faces and long-held resentment. I was looking for some heat in those eyes.
“Staying holed up isn’t the way to go,” I said. “For reasons I will make clear once all of us have a chance to spend a little time together outside.”
11
The problem my fellow prisoners had was that by its very nature, seclusion made them less front-of-mind for the soldiers living in the fort. Their group silence and solemnity was effective—and a little creepy—but keeping to their rooms only removed them from view and made it easier for the soldiers to ignore them.
So we changed that up. Everyone started working out in the courtyard with me. This was helpful in a lot of ways. It certainly reminded the two hundred or so people in the fort exactly what the cost of their mission was, and I heard more than one soldier muse aloud that the prisoners looked not far off from the walking dead themselves.
It also made it way easier for us to talk openly. There weren’t any listening devices hidden in the potatoes. I suppose it was possible, but if we were dealing with paranoia and preparedness at that level, the game was over. You can only deal with so much.
What we were doing was less psychological warfare than it was slow conditioning. Overt demonstrations and chest-thumping about how bad things were for us would be the same as slapping our guards in the face. They would harden to it, distance themselves from us emotionally. But working in silence, bare arms showing bandages and needle marks, faces ghostly and terrible, was passive. It was much like the way early darkness in winter progressively changes the mood of people.
We were the low winter sun come early.
I still did my thing, trying to help out where I could. If the soldiers and guards were more wary around me and held their guns a bit more tight, I didn’t blame them. I had tried to kill their head of research, after all. Triggers were unpredictable. Dangerous. All the widespread beliefs about us were proved true by that day out on the road, weren’t they? Didn’t matter that I had entirely valid, logical reasons for it so long as the stereotypes were confirmed.
Yet many of the soldiers still saw the validity in the things I was saying. Proof: one had convinced his commanding officer that a simple idea of mine was worth trying out.
When I discovered that the clinic and patient dorms were the only buildings with heat, I suggested an easy fix. Firewood was already being brought in constantly, so I explained my solution and promised a demonstration. All of the parts could be found at any number of abandoned stores, and they weren’t things most survivors would think about.
I was sitting on the bed of a truck parked inside the wall, slowly snipping and bending pieces of metal duct work into a jet stove, when Garcia found me.
“Hey,” she said somewhat hesitantly. “Mind if we chat?”
I glanced up at her, pausing the movement of my fingers so I didn’t cut the shit out of them on the jagged metal. “Not at all. What’s up?”
She frowned slightly. “Uh, okay. You sound chipper. Kind of thought you’d be furious with me.”
Puzzled, I raised an eyebrow. “Why would I be?”
“Because I stopped you from killing the captain and hit you with my gun?” she ventured.
I laughed. “You saved my life by doing the first, and the second was kind of your only option. I’m not gonna hold a grudge for that. Shit, I’d have done it if I were you.”
She seemed to accept that for the truth it was. She waved a hand at the assortment of junk in front of me. “What’s all this?”
I explained my idea to her. It wasn’t really original, but no one here had thought of it.
Garcia was skeptical. “You can’t just install little stoves inside.”
“Sure I can,” I said. “Did it back home a bunch of times. Works like a charm. I’ll show you.”
And I did. She even helped me install the first one. It required knocking out part of a window, a lot of swearing, and much fine-tuning, but eventually we got it all worked out. When it was finished, a small steel cylinder sat upright on a paving stone. Above it stretched a makeshift hood to collect smoke and gasses, running up and out the missing piece of window, which we had sealed with spray foam insulation from a can.
Inside, a piece of firewood was already burning, fed by small slivers of kindling shoved in through the opening at the bottom. Garcia helped me set the other paving stones around it at angles to hopefully prevent sparks from getting loose. They’d also soak up waste heat and radiate it back into the room slowly.
The chilly bunk room was already warming noticeably. Garcia put her hands near the little stove and let out a pleased sound deep in her throat. “This is awesome. We’ve been sleeping in our bags fully clothed for weeks.”
I started cleaning up our mess, gathering tools and scrap material. “It’s not really a big deal. Gives me something to do.”
“Yeah,” Garcia said. “Just don’t know why you would. I mean, we took you prisoner. This is great, believe me, but it’s not gonna win you special treatment.”
I sat back on my heels. “I didn’t think it would. But maybe if we all start to treat each other like human beings worthy of compassion and consideration, it can make things a little better for everyone.”
Garcia stared at me for a few seconds. “Wow. Were you a philosophy major? Because that’s some corny shit right there.”
“Bitch,” I said with a smile.
Garcia and I were schlepping our assorted gear across the courtyard when a loud clang and piercing curses echoed across it.
Then there were shouts. Lots of shouts.
For a brief moment I thought the soldiers on the walls raising their weapons were aiming at us. It was ridiculous, of course. They faced outward, watching down the ramp and out toward the woods surrounding the fort. Yet I had internalized being a prisoner despite the little freedoms. First and foremost I considered myself a target.
“Stay here,” Garcia barked as she dropped her load of tools and took off in a dead sprint for the open gate.
“Fuck that,” I said, dropping my own and following after.
“We got incoming, bottom of the hill,” a voice from the wall shouted. Several soldiers were trying to pull the gate shut manually, a few others clustered around the maintenance hatch watching a familiar pair of legs sticking out of it.”
“Move!” I screamed as I approached wh
ere Jones was working. The power and authority in my voice must have been epic, because they moved like someone had slapped their collective ass with a spiked paddle. Or maybe they were just so used to following orders that a decisive one was second nature. Could have been that, but I like the first one better.
“What’s going on, Jones?” I asked, slipping as far into the hole in the wall as I could.
“Slipped when one of them called down to tell me we had incoming,” he said. “I was in the middle of taking the damn door and lock apart again.”
“Same problem as before?” I asked, though I doubted it. We’d worked that out fairly well, I thought.
“No idea,” he said as he strained to loosen a bolt. “Totally different problem this time. The fuckwads who built this place bought cheap.”
“So there’s no way to close the gate?” I asked.
Jones shook his head, though the tension in his body made it a small movement. “Not ’til I get this fucking thing apart, no. We’re wide open.”
I darted off to Garcia, who was halfway up one of the narrow ladders leading to the guard platforms. “Hey, we need to block the gate. Door’s fucked.”
She looked down at me and swore. “I’ll get some keys. You get the hell inside where it’s safe. We got this.”
I thought about obeying her. I promise.
Then I didn’t. Instead I walked over to the nearest truck and opened its door. I knew from observation that weapons were kept in each of them, and no one was paying me enough mind to notice the small theft. From behind the driver’s seat I drew a heavy extendable baton and flicked it open, then went back to the open gate.
I also knew the armed, uniformed people around me wouldn’t use their firearms unless absolutely necessary. It was one of those pieces of common sense everyone had adopted since sound was one of the things that attracted zombies. By the time I got there, ten other people stood ready with melee weapons. A few of them looked at me suspiciously but said nothing as I planted myself ten feet behind them and waited for the worst.
